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The battlefield and beyond.

Article Excerpt
Studies of campaigns and battles (along with biographies) have long been staples of Civil War history and in some cases even predate the end of the war itself. They are part of an old and venerable tradition that has shown great persistence and remains popular today especially among the large buff audience. In several respects traditional campaign studies possess substantial virtues and deserve an appreciative audience. At their best, such works present a clear narrative and analysis of strategy and tactics--no small achievement in itself. It is certainly debatable whether relatively minor engagements deserve full-scale studies that get down to the company level, but for the more significant battles of the war, talented historians have often written compelling narratives of truly significant events. Professional historians have vastly underestimated both the difficulty and value of such works, and anyone who has attended a national historical meeting has undoubtedly overheard dismissive comments about "battle books"--if not military history in general--from scholars who see political, social, or cultural studies as somehow loftier or more important contributions to Clio.

Such academic snobbery is maddening and amusing at the same time. It also reveals a vast ignorance about the central role of military history for understanding American history in general and the Civil War era in particular. I have even heard well-known scholars admit that they taught Civil War history courses with very little attention to campaigns and thought their students were rather unenlightened for expecting them actually to deal with some of the fighting. In fact, studies of Civil War battles and campaigns have evolved greatly over the years, and more traditional approaches have been refined and improved. Look at the amount of research involved, the clear analysis, and the deft prose in Stephen Sears on Antietam or John Hennessy on Second Bull Run or Albert Castel on the Atlanta campaign for model studies that deserve the plaudits of general readers and professional historians alike. (1)

For their part of course, some Civil War buffs would insist that the traditional campaign study is the only way to do a campaign study, and they will rail against any writer who deviates from that formula. This is notably true at conferences aimed at the general public and especially on amazon.com. Some readers basically want old stories retold in a familiar way. They have little interest in larger questions about the war (especially the relationship of slavery to Union and Confederate war aims) and may not even want to pay much attention to a particular battle's significance beyond the battlefield itself. Political context is usually acceptable (in small doses), and certainly the best of the recent traditional campaign studies have included more on the common soldiers' perspective on combat than was the case only a few decades ago. But any author who ranges into social and cultural history had better be prepared for some skeptical if not hostile reactions, often centering on tired...

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